Ryan Davis
Michael Jordan always said, you know, Republicans buy sneakers. And when you get to be that big of a creator, you're ultimately an entrepreneur.

Chris Mailander
And when you say that in that way, you are the product. I do think about Elon Musk, who sometimes confuses his role and becomes the product. But then there's a ramification, which is that, you know, net income on Tesla last quarter was off by 71%, 73%. Something of that nature, because you pissed off a whole bunch of people who do not want to buy your cars now.

Ryan Davis
Yeah, and as we enter a phase where CEOs are expected to be the chief influencer of their organization in a way that I don't even think was true a few years ago.

Chris Mailander
Today, we're going to get an inside view into how something that is extraordinarily influential to the way that we consume ideas and products and emotions, both in the political realm, commercial realm, entertainment, and so forth. And that pertains to influencer marketing.

I have an interesting guest today who has a background that intersects from politics to commerce to the theater to Broadway. And has this outsider looking in type of perspective because they've come at it from so many different ways.

Ryan Davis started in conservative politics and then was the youth campaign manager for John McCain in his presidential run. John McCain being the maverick Republican, grew disenfranchised with the Iraq war and then switched over to democratic politics and to progressive politics and then has worked through a number of different organizations.

I want to give you just a sense of some of the places where he's worked. He was one of the founders of Blue State Digital as part of their social media director, the very first one that they had. And as part of that, worked with Obama 2012, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Godiva, Celebrity Cruises, the NAACP, the Jewish Federations of North America, United Way, Microsoft, the American Museum of Natural History, The X Factor, the It Gets Better Project, Lady Gaga's Born This Way Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Francois Hollande, the Cleveland Clinic, the British Museum, and others.

He's also worked on projects that were optioned by Whoopi Goldberg for Broadway, has worked with Alicia Keys on a partnership program for criminal justice, and is the winner of a number of different awards.

And so it's a privilege to be able to have you, Ryan, take us through influencer marketing, how, what it means, how it works, the behavior today. And then I want you to do some forecasting for me and show me where it's going and how it's going to influence our world politically, commercially, entertainment-wise going forward. Welcome.

Ryan Davis
Hey, perfect. It's nice to be here. Thanks for having me.

Chris Mailander
So set the foundation. Give me the rock bottom foundation to understand this world. What is it today, influencer marketing? How does it work?

Ryan Davis
Well, I think, you know, influencer marketing has been around as a concept as long as any sort of celebrity endorsement has been. So, like, you know, I like to think back to Jerry Seinfeld in the 90s with the American Express card, you know, in those commercials. But that's the idea is that you're working with a person who has influence over their audience. And, you know, hopefully that person aligns with your brand or organization.

They're creating a piece of content with you and that content is the advertisement. And, you know, what we're doing is we're working with creators who might have just a few thousand followers all the way up to folks in the millions of followers to make content and then, you know, scaling that content and putting it in front of the right people.

Chris Mailander
So talk about that as well, which we always think about the influencer economy and creators and those that have the massive audiences. But you mentioned something that was interesting right there, which is that you work with creators also with small audiences. Is there a different place, a different role, a different way that you work with different kinds of creators at different levels?

Ryan Davis
Yeah, I think the messenger is as much a part of the message as the content. So finding the person who can really speak to your audience.

So, you know, on the political side, they're often trying to reach a very specific geographic and demographic cohort of persons. So we go out and we recruit a person who would fit into that. And, you know, they might not have a lot of followers, but you take that person, they make that content, and then you can use paid media to scale that content and put it in front of all those different voters.

So you're working with a suburban mom from Wisconsin. You take that and you put that content up against the voter file against other suburban moms from Wisconsin. So you're scaling that content. So it doesn't really matter at the end how many followers that mom has initially, because everybody's going to see the content when you scale it.

Chris Mailander
And how does that process work? So, say you're working in Wisconsin, you're working on some sort of issue or a campaign, etc. There is a message that you want to send out. Walk me through how that process works of finding the suburban mom in that instance, or the fly fisherman in Wyoming and pulling that all the way through.

Ryan Davis
Yes, so the finding is a mix of a technology which helps us identify the right user depending on the platform that they're on and people who are collaborating, reaching out to find that person.

So when we're working with a younger creator, you know, they're much more likely to want to work over direct message. We're working with, you know, more of a middle-aged creator, they're going to want to do work over email. So it's really finding that creator and collaborating with them in a way that makes them comfortable.

So we've identified them. Now we're working with them one-on-one. Then we get that content. We go back to the client, say, here's the creator. Here's the content. Client gives feedback. And we go back to the creator, make those revisions.

And then hopefully, we have a piece of content that's good to go, goes live on that creator's platform. So Instagram or TikTok or Pinterest, wherever the campaign is. And then you have that piece of content, that asset, that video that you can use on your website or your paid media program, etc. So, all the way from finding the creator, it's a collaboration process, all the way into the publishing.

Chris Mailander
Yeah, so it's quite collaborative process. So you're working on messaging or the imagery or how it's presented. And that's a back and forth exchange between the influencer, the creator and the client?

Ryan Davis
Yeah, and the best performing content is definitely content where the creator has a lot of leeway to make the content creatively sort of work for them. The clients who come to us with super specific way they want the content to be, they're going to have less success than a client who comes to us and says, here's the message, here's the call to action, but I trust the creator to speak to my audience in the way that they...

You know, the creator having more opportunity to be creative, you're going to get better content.

Chris Mailander
Right. And how does, so if I saw a creator that I was following and we'll continue with the example of that suburban mother in Wisconsin and they're in my list and on Instagram or TikTok and so their content comes up, a certain portion of that content will be the typical issues that they're focused on and then interleaved within that will be something which is a paid program behind it. Is that correct? Is that fair?

Ryan Davis
Yeah, exactly. So, you know, we work with creators who might, you know, they might partner with other brands, organizations, and we work with creators that might be their first time, you know, doing a brand partnership. But we are looking for creators who can, you know, speak authentically, who are not doing only brand partnerships. You know, you want somebody who's still got that sort of authentic, you know, that kind of credibility. So you don't want somebody who does too many... too many brand parts.

Chris Mailander
Right. My assumption is also that the platform would be aware of some of that and may filter or gatekeep some of the content if it is too much paid content that's getting pushed through.

Ryan Davis
Yes, certainly, like, you know, the creators with the highest engagement rate are going to have a diversity of content and going to want to bounce.

Chris Mailander
Yeah, yeah, interesting. I mean, one of the thoughts that I have, you know, kind of bigger picture is that media is so influential to, you know, the largest issues of the day, who's president?

I mean, in the day of radio, FDR was a command, you know, commanded radio for the purposes at that point in time through the Depression and World War II. And then when TV came on, JFK really became president because of the power of television. And Nixon didn't because he didn't perform particularly well physically as a candidate.

We've gone through other iterations, those who got onto the internet and figured out email campaigning and then social media in its early days, whether it's Facebook and other platforms like that. We now have at the pinnacle of attention, the attention economy, are people like President Trump and Elon Musk and other characters like that who really work well in the attention economy and being able to drive that traffic towards them.

Talk to me a little bit about that in terms of what you see today, in terms of those trend lines and how they've been able to use it. But also, I think it's an illustration of how fast these things move and then what we might see over the next two to four years might be quite different. It could, it could shift.

Ryan Davis
Yeah, well, I think what has happened that which won't shift in the next several years is a sort of decentralization of brand messaging and brand creative. So there was a long time when the brand would have a social media channel and the brand would communicate.

And what we've seen is through creators, influencers and all these digital media properties is just a lot of folks who have voices. And if you work with these folks who have built their own audiences, you're kind of buying immediate credibility into all these different spaces. So, you know, that's sort of the idea of influencer.

And I think of influencer as, you know, sure, there's the social media people, the beautiful folks who live in New York and Los Angeles, who make content about fashion and travel. But then there's the whole subset of Substackers and podcasters and streamers and anyone who's built an audience on digital media is an influencer, is credible, can bring an audience.

If you're a brand, an organization looking to break through, working with these creators is just a better way to get your message out than just a direct advertising.

I think, you know, what you saw the Trump campaign do. And now in the Shadow 2028 campaign, which is clearly happening, you see, you know, folks like Mayor Pete go on a conservative comedian talk to do three hours. And I think you're going to see a lot more of that. You're going to see people want to go on more shows that have audiences that don't agree with them about everything, that are reaching across the aisle, and that's going to be podcasters and streamers in this whole new kind of digital media ecosystem that you're a part of.

Chris Mailander
Yeah, it's interesting. It seems to be the path that many are pursuing, like Gavin Newsom right now, which is to create his own platform, his own channel, to drive through there, but also to be able to take on, to diversify his audience and take on that more controversial line of dialogue so you're not so much in the echo chamber.

And I'm curious as to your thoughts about that, A, B, is that a lesson learned from perhaps the Kamala Harris campaign, which there seemed to be apprehension about going into more controversial, friction-oriented forums.

Ryan Davis
Yeah, you know, I mean, she only had 96 days. They did have to make decisions, you know, in terms of real estate. But I'm sure looking back, the campaign, you know, wishes they had gone on more of these platforms.

But absolutely one of the learnings out of this, that campaign cycle will be get on these platforms, go on non-political platforms, do the two hour interview, do the zany interview where you're eating the hot wings while you're talking. Like, you know, this is how people are gonna consume news and how they're gonna meet you.

And you have to be willing to, you know, in the same way that you have to be able to sit down and do the two hour New York Times editorial interview with the board, you gotta sit down and do two hours on Rogan, you know? And this is not entirely a new thing. It's not that much different than doing 30 minutes on Howard Stern in the 90s or doing your five minutes on Letterman. It's just a kind of continuation of that. There's just a lot more voices. There's not just one Stern, there's dozens.

Chris Mailander
Right, right, right. So how do you make those choices? If you do have this decentralization or fragmentation, a lot of new platforms and a lot of new pathways that you can go, what's the mind of the candidate or the brand, the commercial brand as they're... what's the algebra that they're using to make those decisions?

Ryan Davis
Yes. Then it's like it all comes down to sort of who's my audience and where are they? And, you know, if my audience is Gen Z women, you know, Rogan is not going to be a big concern of mine. You know, that's not right where the Gen Z women are.

But if my audience are, you know, Gen Z and young millennial men who like gaming, you know, Rogan is going to be top, top of the list. So I think it comes back to who are your Rogans, who are the big fish? And the big fish are always great to go after. And if you can get a spot on whatever the equivalent of Rogan or your Oprah or whatever your audience is, you should do that.

But, you know, podcasting and streaming, you know, you've got all these people who have sort of smaller tribes and you should do those. And I think, you know, the Mayor Pete strategy in 2020 when he ran was to do pretty much any media that asked, he said yes. And I think that we're kind of in that ecosystem.

What are the fire running for president right now? Like what are the top podcasts in New Hampshire and Iowa and South Carolina? You know, and I would be doing the South Carolina radio hour, you know, because, you know, they don't have the biggest audience, but they have the audience that matters the most for, you know, when you're when you're going out there.

So I think that's probably the same for every organization, who's your buyer, what are they listening to? And you should go on those podcasts.

Chris Mailander
So there's a piece of it, like when you talk about Mayor Pete, one of his gifts is his willingness to go onto Fox News. He'll go into the lion's den for a progressive Democrat is to go onto Fox News and he combats particularly well. He's willing to engage and he's willing to have that back and forth exchange and others are not so willing. It's dangerous. They might not be quite as gifted or they don't react to it as well or they're worried about the uncertainty.

So I think there's a couple of dimensions to a question there, which is one, I imagine that piece of the counseling is how willing is your candidate to go into that environment, which is provocative, challenging. I challenge your audience in some new ways. A.

B, it strikes me also that that is the kind of content that rises to the top, whether you're on X or Instagram or TikTok, etc., is that when you have these flashpoints of conversations or there's more drama in it. And it feels like also in these unstructured environment, I don't know if it is or not. I'm curious. It's the third dimension. Too many dimensions to my question.

Third dimension is, is it more authentic? When you go into that environment, you're put on the pressure. There's less time for the key messaging. It's not as bad as if I went on to the Sunday morning news program where I thought about a rehearsal response and we've got 22 minutes and that's all we're going to have. Whereas you go into a three hour Rogan or an hour and a half Call Her Daddy. It's different.

So too many questions. Apologies there. But if you could kind of delay that for me and how to think about that.

Ryan Davis
I think people... there's this whole idea of the parasocial relationships that you have. People have a relationship with a podcast host that they listen to a lot where they're in their ears and it's very intimate and they're talking a lot. And it's like, my dad used to listen to talk radio in the 90s. I could hear Rush coming from the other... it's like a direct into the brain sort of thing.

And so they've got a lot of credibility with their audiences and the kind of podcasts that have become really popular are ones that are more stream of consciousness, more around a lot of issues. So when you listen to Rogan, you might start in one place and end up in an entirely different place.

And I do think one of the skills of a modern day politician is navigating whatever the modern day media ecosystem is. So for FDR, it was being really good on radio. For Kennedy, it was being really good on TV. For 2028 campaign, it's gonna be, are you comfortable having an hour and a half long conversation, you know, on streaming while there's people typing and while there's, you know, like that's the media environment you have to adapt to.

So people will either be good at it, like Mayor Pete, like AOC on... certainly the conservatives have, I think have folks that have kind of more grown up on that media environment. So yeah, so I think that's just gonna be how elections are gonna be decided by people who are really good at having those conversations.

Chris Mailander
Yeah, it does seem that conservatives have been quite good at it. You mentioned Rush back in the day, and he brought along this kind of controversial style of journalism and Fox News has obviously done it as well. And I think it has probably given them a leg up in terms of that ability to combat in these forums and feel comfortable with it and wing it and go forward with it as opposed to more of the establishment approach.

Do you see that changing? Do you see the balance of power... do you see young candidates coming up through democratic politics, for example, that you think they're getting it? You know, Gavin Newsom's trying to, and he's a big name and he's probably, you know, in that peak of the establishment. Are there others that are, you know, running for Congress or governor or mayor's races, etc., where you're like, ooh, this is liberal or progressive candidate, but they're willing to go and they're willing to play that game.

Ryan Davis
Yeah, I think we're already seeing people like Deja Fox, who's a 2025... is running for Congress in Arizona and she's a content creator. So she's running a very internet first, content first campaign. That's really interesting.

But I think what makes a candidate a superstar is when the candidate meets the moment and the media is right for the candidate. In 2008, Obama really fit like the conversations the internet was having, like who the internet wanted. And 08 and 2012, you know, he was a sort of perfect whisperer of all that.

You know, Trump is a TV animal. He was born and raised in the mean streets of New York TV in the 80s and the 90s. He understands like how the media works, metaboloids on up and so had a lot of control over that.

So, you know, as we head into these new situations, some, you know, some of these people are going to arise. I think Cory Booker has a smart team. But yeah, when we're looking at some of the folks who are running now for Congress or some of the folks we haven't even heard of yet who are going to be running, you know, there's going to be people who are natives to these platforms who are going to do really interesting things.

Chris Mailander
What else do you see emerging over the next, call it the 2026 midterms, the 2028 presidential election year, etc.? You mentioned somebody like Trump came up through the 80s. He's been at the media game. It's media strategy first led presidency, which is what's going to work with media? And I drive towards that and then we'll see where the chips lie.

There's probably a certain amount of fatigue that will set in with that strategy. So there has to be a new strategies which fill the void. Obama worked well in 2008. And then you see the rise of Donald Trump and rising through that. What do you see coming along? You mentioned a couple of candidates, but what techniques or what opportunities or what's the evolution here?

Ryan Davis
So if we look at, I think, 2024 was very much for influencer what 2008 was for social media. So I think influencer is going to be a given going into this next cycle. It's going to be a big deal.

What I thought we only kind of started to see was more of that AI influence. And when you say AI, you know, that can mean a million things because AI is going to influence campaigns on every possible vertical from like how people knock on doors to like the messages they're receiving over social media.

But we just saw a few startups on both sides of the aisle. We saw investment on both sides of the aisle. And 26 is going to be like a tester of like, I'm gonna see some more stuff in the field. And then 28 is gonna be crazy. Every ad you see is gonna be generated because it knows that Chris lives there and he's voted like this and he subscribes to this magazine. So you're gonna see that ad.

So that's what's coming. Incredible personalization at scale brought on by AI and whatever else AI will do to all these different verticals that any startup's gonna have to deal with.

Chris Mailander
Yeah, so is that the nature of the startups that are AI startups that are getting investment in the political realm, which is I assume that they're consuming a tremendous amount of data, which is all the demographic data, the voter rolls, past voting histories, the socio-demographic and geolocation data associated with it. And then you map that all through AI and be able to deliver that hyper-specialized, hyper-personalized messaging.

Ryan Davis
Yeah, and then the email you get, you know, back in 2008, 2012, you know, we were clever when we knew you were, we knew you're a man, where you lived and, you know, your zip code and if you'd voted and you'd get a version. You know, there might be 25, 50 versions of an email.

But, you know, that's just going to... there's going to be every single email will be unique. So it'll be like a snowflake, you know, where the email that you're getting asking for a donation will know every donation you've ever made, and, you know, who you are and who your wife is and did she give and be able to say, well, your wife gave this cycle, Chris, but you didn't. And so it'll be able to do all... I don't know. And it'll know all the things that have worked in the past for what's made you give.

You can only imagine how effective, and that'll be happening. Politics is always a place where people try new technology, because it's like the stakes are high and your startup, your campaign's not gonna exist if your candidate loses, so you might as well go for it. But you're going to see this sort of personalization in every vertical.

Chris Mailander
Yeah, super interesting. Take me through a little bit of the economics of what that means in terms of the creator economy. You talk about it might be the suburban mom in Wisconsin or a fly fisherman that's on ecology or environmental issues out west. And they have 2,000 followers versus what we also see and know, which is that if you have 3 million followers, your price point is different.

Talk to me about the range. Talk to me about the leverage, the value. Tell me about the return also when you think about that.

Ryan Davis
So, somebody who has a few thousand followers might charge a few hundred dollars for a video and then that price can go up. We've had people we've paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for content. So it can really go up.

The way that you look at return on investment for organic can be things like affiliate style... link in bio, link in story. But where we see the real return is when you look at it, when it's paired with ad spend. We ran a campaign recently that was an end of year fundraising campaign for a big organization that's like a pro health organization. And we partnered with a bunch of people who've been affected by this condition and talk about how this organization had helped them. And we were able to generate over 300% return on ad spend.

So every dollar this organization put into the Meta ATM, the Meta Casino, they were able to take three bucks out. So it was a good, that's the kind of thing where you're pairing the organic with the paid and I think you see the real returns.

Chris Mailander
Mm-hmm. Yeah, interesting. And then is the compensation based on simply the placement of the content, or is there a return based, meaning, hey, if I place this content and you earn $3, I get a commission or a scalable compensation for that?

Ryan Davis
We were definitely playing with different models where the creators would be more incentivized to create a piece of content and then for every thing that's sold, units sold, get X dollars or, you know...

So I think there are ways that that can be useful. I'm hesitant to do the pure, like a pure affiliate play because then I think the quality of the creators who participate becomes much lower. If you're guaranteeing a certain amount of money, the quality of the creator is going to be higher because it's like, you know, I'm willing to put the time in because I know I'm going to get this much.

And then, you know, people who are doing the freebie stuff, you know, the quality... they're going to be probably just doing a lot of freebie campaigns, hoping to strike, you know.

Chris Mailander
Mm-hmm. All right. So because you have this experience, which is on the political side as well as the commercial side, talk to me about that intersection, that Venn diagram and where it overlaps. So, you know, say one of the major podcast platforms that are out there, Rogan, etc. How do commercial or brands think about sponsorships or advertising in those contexts, which can certainly increase your visibility relative to the potential risk or the disaffection that can also be created by conflict-oriented or dynamic content that's out there.

Ryan Davis
Yeah, well, I think in terms of the politics and the non-politics, I think you learn from both. You know, we'll see something that will be effective in the commercial space to sell a hamburger. And we think, well, how could that be applied to, you know, to generating a volunteer on the nonprofit or on the advocacy side and vice versa. So I think those two things can really build on each other.

We do find it difficult, you know, the creators that are the most successful in the political space are the ones who make the least amount of political content. So some of our most successful political content has been working with a fly fisherman in Montana to talk about the importance of public lands. And this person only makes content about fly fishing. So when they make content about where they're fly fishing and then they're talking about how important it is to keep Montana beautiful, you know, that pops out to their followers because it's kind of an unusual thing to see.

But because of how polarized we are as a society, it's getting harder and harder to find those folks who are willing to kind of like put their personal brands on the line to weigh in on something, even if it's, you know, something that isn't in a super political...

Chris Mailander
That's interesting. So you're saying that the fly fisherman who is very concerned about the environment out in Montana might avoid being an advocate for it because of the risk of political ramifications or reputational or in the community or socially speaking, they could get popped.

Ryan Davis
Exactly. Even though for the client, they're a dream messenger. Yeah.

Chris Mailander
Yeah, interesting. What do you do about that? Is there any way to manage that or is there an evolution where it becomes...

Ryan Davis
It's only gotten harder. When we started this in 2020, which was the first cycle, the amount of people who said yes was much higher. Now people are just sort of, just don't want to talk. That old saying, you don't talk about politics or religion at the dinner table. And a lot of people take that on their political, on their social media too.

Chris Mailander
Yeah, so it's interesting. The small creator with a smaller audience, you know, call it a thousand or two thousand followers that are very loyal and love fly fishing content will have a more powerful impact on engagement and resonance with their audience. But they're unwilling to use that for that purpose. Yeah, it's quite interesting. Whereas somebody who has millions of... hundreds of thousands or millions in their audience numbers is more willing to commercialize it potentially.

Ryan Davis
But that person would also maybe not want to weigh in on a woman's right to choose, right? So if the creator hasn't been political in the past, Michael Jordan always said, Republicans buy sneakers. And when you get to be that big of a creator, you're ultimately an entrepreneur. You're the product. And you don't want to piss off 42% of your followers.

Chris Mailander
And when you say that in that way, you are the product. I do think about Elon Musk, who sometimes confuses his role and becomes the product. But then there's a ramification, which is that net income on Tesla last quarter was off by 71%, 73%. Something of that nature, because you pissed off a whole bunch of people who do not want to buy your cars now. And so there's a trade there. And he seems to be pulling back now as we record this.

Ryan Davis
Yeah, and as we enter a phase where CEOs are expected to be the chief influencer of their organization in a way that I don't even think was true a few years ago, where, you know, the same way we talked about the skills that you need to run for president in 2028, a lot of those are the similar kind of skills you need now to run a big organization, you know, and you're more expected to communicate in this way.

Chris Mailander
I think that's a super interesting perspective in terms of the expectation that your CEO is also your chief influencer. And so they've got to be adept at these methodologies, understand these trends, be able to or willing to engage in the techniques that are necessary to manage the reputation on a different platform with a different context around it.

Very interesting when you take a guy that was a CFO or the chief accountant or a great sales guy and all of a sudden it's like, by the way, you're the chief influencer.

Ryan Davis
It's not just doing three minutes on Squawk Box anymore.

Chris Mailander
Yeah, right. Exactly. And I think about the conflict right now with Harvard University and the Trump administration and the president of Harvard University seems to be stepping up as the chief influencer to use the platform as a way and the techniques of this platform to push back on what he's encountering with the Trump administration. If that's fair. I don't know. Maybe it's not. Super interesting.

One of the interesting things also that I wanted to talk about is, so you are a long time New Yorker and have this diverse experience, etc. If you can share, you live a nomadic lifestyle now. And when we first talked, you were in Romania and today you're in Mexico City.

I would love to explore that, which is understanding how you put all that together, and how you manage this, and how you stay attuned. And I think it also influences my perspective when we originally talked, which is you're an insider as it pertains to influencer and political campaigns and these brand campaigns, etc. But you do it from offshore in other places looking in. And how does that change your perspective potentially?

Ryan Davis
Yeah, so that's a great question. I was in New York for 24 years, basically after I moved. I grew up in Eastern Shore, Maryland. I went to New York for school and pretty much lived in New York the whole time outside of heading out for some campaigns or shows.

And then I decided I wanted to... what better time to travel? Now that we live in this moment where you don't necessarily have to go into the office and so started doing more traveling around during COVID. Like went to, like, you know, went around domestically into places like in the suburbs of Nashville and the suburbs of, you know, gosh, Nashville, Knoxville, you know, all these... all these are Asheville.

A lot of -villes out there and so got to experience that. And then, you know, then wanted to kind of travel around. And so I've learned Latin America and then spent the last few months in Europe.

And then in terms of like looking in, it's interesting because I always feel like the internet, you know, I've been an internet... I was an internet kid in the 90s, which was a very specific thing to be, to make a choice to be on the internet. It wasn't like you were automatically on it like you are today. But I always feel like I've been monitoring the internet from the internet.

And so even though I'm abroad, the internet that I'm seeing is the stuff that I've curated. Then I guess the most local stuff you see is on... it seems like Facebook and Twitter are both... they both sort of feed me localized content. So I'll see like Romanian content or I'll see Colombian content. I also think that podcast advertising is really fast at it. So I'll get like language, in-language content when I'm in like Germany. I'm like, that's a German ad. That's really fast.

So yeah, I guess it's a long way to answer that. I don't know that it feels that different, you know, than when I was in real life places.

Chris Mailander
Yeah, interesting... You've been doing this also for a while. Talk to me a little bit about your technology footprint. How do you make that all work? There's a lot of great tools that are out there that help in terms of creating that ever presence and to be able to manage, you know, the time zones, the tasking, everything that has to happen. I'm curious as to how you set yourself up to do that.

Ryan Davis
Yeah, so we built people first. We didn't have an office to begin with, so we were just centralized. And so we built on the Google Workspace, which we use for documents and email and calendar and all that good stuff. And then Slack is a godsend for kind of real-time communications. And then the team uses Airtable for content and for tracking of various products.

We've spread that out. We've played with other productivity tools and things are only as good as people are willing to use them. So we've settled on this stack because we have 100% buy-in and everything has a purpose and nobody feels like they're doing something just for the sake that it's part of the process. It all does something that matters.

Chris Mailander
And then how does AI change what you're doing? How do you leverage it, particularly in the realm of influencer marketing and shaping messages or finding people or being able to craft the campaign? Give me a sense of perspective there.

Ryan Davis
Yeah, we built an AI tool early on to help with pricing. It was important to us to be equitable on how we did pricing. So we built a tool that did that.

I'm actually fundraising right now. We're building a SaaS platform that will incorporate more AI on both the client side and the creator side. So a creator might be able to brainstorm an idea with the AI, brainstorm a script, and get feedback prior to filming it. A client might be able to get feedback on a creative brief, get suggestions about a stronger CTA, all from the back end.

And then in terms of integrating AI into my personal world, it's cliche to say, but it's been a really long time since something's been integrated into my day-to-day personal functionality. Like, what would it be? Email, the phone, social media. I think the AI integration is as big as any of those things.

I have ChatGPT tab up all day long, and I'm using it for various things. I know all its limitations. I think the difference between somebody who's good at using LLMs at this point and somebody who isn't is a person who understands the limitations of the AI, is reading it and making sure everything makes sense and is not, like, just trusting the AI get it right. But it's an incredible tool.

Chris Mailander
Yeah, absolutely. In your particular business, which is about recruiting audiences and engaging with them and finding new ways to do so, and I think just to stay relevant, you have to find these trends and build on the trends wherever they might come from. Talk to me a little bit about any potential abuses, particularly in the creator economy, whether it's deep fakes or otherwise. Give me a sense of what to look for.

Ryan Davis
Yeah, I think there is the idea that creators could have their image and likeness stolen and then used in ads is a very real thing. You know, both you and I have enough content on the internet to easily create virtual versions of us and make us say and do anything, right?

If we do imagine, imagine like the amount of people that could be created. It's so... so it is, it is. I think that the platforms are going to continue. And this is something that they have interest in as well, at making it clear what's AI content and what is not. And right now, it's very like the creator has to kind of specify. But I do think that'll get more, you know, that'll get more sophisticated.

In a perfect world, governments would step in. It would be illegal for a company to take Ryan Davis's likeness and to scale it and use it in an ad. And there are various laws kind of percolating right now. But it's hard to tell how functional the government is at any given time. But I do think that's a real thing if creatives should be concerned about it.

Do you see what H&M has done, which is really interesting? So they have gotten permission from a handful of their models to do these full body scans that are everything down to their freckles. And they're going to use these models, and they're going to pay royalties to use them in computer generated ads. So, instead of having to shoot the model in every t-shirt, they can do the, you know, make this thing.

So that's all well and good, you know, in the case of these models are getting paid. But think about also like the lighting designers and the photographers. So it's interesting. Again, it's, you know, they're paying the creator, the model, because they're doing it on the up and up. But, you know, anybody could do that. You don't need that fancy software.

Chris Mailander
It's an unbelievable amount of change. I try not to overreact. When you think about how fundamental that shift is, like with your example, is if you do that with six models, that means that there's an additional 30 that you might have hired that you won't, because you can use these on a replicated basis going forward.

The additional skills associated with it, it is a profound and dramatic change. And yet, we always manage through these periods of profound change. And even, you know, to your point, which is growing up with the internet in the 90s, I mean, you probably started out with a 30-bot system in the Eastern Shore of Maryland, you know, looking at lines of text coming across there in the early days.

So we'll survive, we'll progress, we got to figure it out. But this is fantastic, Ryan. I really appreciate you taking us deeper into the business, the business model, the creator economy, what it means in terms of our current state of our politics and our brand awareness and where that could go. So thank you very much.

Ryan Davis
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been fun.

Chris Mailander
Awesome, take care.